Thanks for updating us on this pivotal case from Sept. 10-11,
1951. Your brief mention doesn't do justice to the tremendous
wealth
of data on this case on your website -- military records, newspaper
reports,
unpublished Ruppelt notes, the revised Hall-Connors chapter on the
case,
as well as the scientific analysis by McDonald. The
transcriptions
of barely readable or unreadable military reports and news articles are
a
great asset to study of this case and represents a lot of work by
whomever
did it -- they should get our collective thanks for this effort.

And as you say in your commentary at the website, this case
seemed to usher in major changes in the UFO project at ATIC -- the
reorganized
Project Grudge on Oct 22, 1951, and the brand new project name Blue
Book
on March 14, 1952.

I think you're right that we probably wouldn't have known
about the Ft. Monmouth radar trackings for a long time if not for
Ruppelt
(though the T-33 sighting was known from the press). It would
have
only come out in 1968 with NICAP's publication of the declassified
Grudge/Blue
Book Status Reports. Was the Ft, Monmouth case among the 41 or so
cases declassified for Keyhoe in Jan 1953?

I'm sure the page is not missing from the Cummings-Rosengarten
wire recording transcript of their investigation, it must not have been
copied or the copies got stuck. If copies were made on the sticky
chemical paper used by a lot of microfilm readers it's easy for pages
to stick together. When I carefully reviewed this case on
borrowed BB microfilm years ago I
noticed no pages
actually missing (only a skipped page number but I know you're talking
about
a different page). I was very careful in reading it through
because
of the importance of this case in official UFO history. I do
think
the page had a list of the names of the Ft. Monmouth radar instructors
and
students involved in the case.

Also, what do you see as indications of a clamp-down on release
of UFO information after this case? It seems to me that Ruppelt
did
the reverse, attempted to get publicity for cases in order to try to
obtain multiple sightings of the same object for triangulation.
Apparently B/Gen William
Garland approved the plan or idea and encouraged the ensuing LIFE
magazine article of April 7, 1952, which had been under way for some
time (Bob Ginna had visited ATIC on June 28, 1951, etc.).

The recounting of the case stops just when the high-level
USAF activity is described. Maybe this part should be included
for
comparison.

Also, you might want to consider including helpful correction
notes in brackets [] as Mike Hall does with the Ruppelt-Cummings
interview
notes of Jan 14, 1955. One correction that stands out from the
first
paragraph is that as Mike notes in his chapter on the case the actual
message
that kicked off the Cummings-Rosengarten investigation came in on Sept
28
rather than Sept 12, and there wasn't an exact time like "3:04 PM" but
at
1400 hours (2 PM) if I recall right. Rather than a teletype (TWX)
it
was a Telecon Transcript, numbered TT-246. ATIC had secretaries
listen in and transcribe classified or important official telephone
calls. And apparently it was not
stamped Operational Immediate -- that was the message priority for Lt
Col
Rosengarten's urgent message to AFOSI on Sept 30 to find out why the
story
had leaked to the press.

The Ruppelt Notes - c/o Robert Swiatek,
FUFOR

You might want to consider using Mike Hall's annotated version
from his chapter which are an excellent help in correcting or better
understanding this material.

The Fort Monmouth Case: A New Look - Wendy
Connors & Michael Hall

This book chapter has been thoroughly revised and expanded
and provides an excellent overview of the sightings and their impact on
the
Air Force. Mike Hall's annotations and corrections in brackets []
for
the various source documents such as Ruppelt's notes are extremely
helpful
to the reader in making sense of the situation and in understanding the
difficulties of
getting at accurate history. For example, Mike points out that in
Ruppelt's
book recounting the Oct 2, 1951, climactic meeting with Gen Cabell and
his
staff, there is mention of a General's report of his personal sighting
from
Saudi Arabia but the actual case involving a Gen E. M. Day occurred in
1952.

A few scattered minor points: There seems some uncertainty
as to the time when the Ft. Monmouth radar UFO tracking occurred --
various times such as 11:10, 11:15 and 11:18 AM are given or
suggested. Probably the best course is to say about 11:15 as it's
a rounder number. Also, the only Operational Immediate priority
message was apparently Rosengarten's on Sept 30 to AFOSI to investigate
the press leak, and it was done on authority of Gen Cabell
probably through his immediate staff. The Telecon Transcript on
Sept
28 wasn't stamped Operational Immediate.

It must be stressed that the alleged balloon explanation involves
TWO balloons launched simultaneously from the same loaction at 11:12 AM
EDT and the T-33 crew saw only ONE UFO. Also, the balloons were
rising at
about 1300 ft/min so by the time of the sighting at 11:35 AM they would
have
been at about 27,000 feet -- much higher than the T-33 at 20,000
feet. The pilots saw the UFO clearly "silhouetted" against the
ground which means the UFO was
certainly lower than 20,000 feet and could not have been the balloons.
McDonald
brings up the fact that such balloons would have been about 0.6
arcminute
-- too small to even see with the naked eye. Yet the T-33 pilots
saw
plenty of detail (see below for more discussion).

Lt Col (not Lt.) Milton D. Willis, Chief of the AFOIN Technical
Capabilities Branch (Evaluation Div), was Gen Cabell's UFO investigator
whom
he called in to do field investigations to make up for the lack of
serious
investigation by AMC/ATIC under Watson in 1950-1. Also it should
be
noted that Gen Samford replaced Gen Cabell on Oct 31/Nov 1, 1951, or
not
too long after the tumultuous Oct 2 meeting, so this must have had an
effect
on UFO policy. It is possible that if Gen Cabell had continued on
as D/I of the Air Force there would have been a sweeping change
top-to-bottom in the handling of the UFO matter (Project Grudge was
reorganized only on
Oct 22 so there was hardly time for Cabell to see any changes before he
was
gone). Instead, it may be that such a change got started but was
not
followed through completely because Gen Cabell left AFOIN. Cabell
became
Director of the Joint Staff of the JCS.

Official Fort Monmouth Documents

This is a great collection of documents. I wonder if
more will be added because I notice the Telecon Transcript of Sept 28,
1951,
that triggered the frantic ATIC investigation is not here. Also
the
Grudge Special Status Report on the case would be nice to have
here.

Evaluation of the Fort Monmouth Incident
- James E McDonald

McDonald points out that the radiosonde balloon(s) launched
at 11:12 AM would have been carried to the north by the upper winds he
checked
in the meteorological records and the T-33 would never have seen any
maneuvers from them. He apparently didn't realize that there were
data in the files on the actual ascent rate of the balloons, indicating
about 1300 ft/min
rather than
800-900 ft/min. Had he seen that he would surely have pointed out
that
the balloons would have been too high to be seen against the ground by
the
T-33 pilots. And lastly, McDonald calculated the angular size of
such
balloons at the 15-mile distance from the T-33 that he estimated and it
was
about 0.6 arcminute -- which is below the size that the human eye can
even
resolve
(about 0.7 arcmin) let alone perceive details of shape and color.
If
the T-33 pilots' size and distance estimates are roughly accurately
proportioned
and in the ballpark, about 30-35 feet at 8,000 feet distance, this
indicates
an angular size of about 15 arcminutes or about 1/2 full moon -- more
than
enough to see the detail they reported.

The speed estimates given, 900+ mph, are hard to accurately
determine because the actual distance to the UFO is not known. If
the
object was only say 2 miles from the T-33 the speed to do a 360 circle
in
2 minutes would be only about 360 mph (but if it was done in 1 minute
then
720 mph, or 45 seconds perhaps 1000 mph; but if it was less than
a
360-deg turn then all these speeds are less as well). But the UFO
seemed to descend -- which ascending balloons can't do -- and possibly
accelerate out of the reach of the T-33 which might indicate a speed in
excess of the
T-33's 600 mph.